Speaker 1: From my Heart Media. This is Missing in Alaska, the
Speaker 1: story of two congressmen who vanished in nineteen two and
Speaker 1: my quest to figure out what happened to them. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, John Wallzac, March fourth, ninet, Tucson, Arizona. The
Speaker 1: sun is setting. The temperature sinks below sixty. There's a
Speaker 1: light breeze. It's early in the evening. At the El
Speaker 1: Dorado Lodge, a luxurious desert resort. A gorgeous tree line
Speaker 1: road leads up to a complex of old stone clad buildings.
Speaker 1: Tranquil mountains lurk in the distance. Sitting at a bar
Speaker 1: is Tom Davis, a detective with the Arizona Department of
Speaker 1: Public Safety. He's joined by a supervisor and a reporter.
Speaker 1: They're all undercover. And that's say you shaped bar, and
Speaker 1: on one side is the public side. On the other
Speaker 1: side is a room and it's just you know, it's
Speaker 1: just an alcove. Well, if you set on the public side,
Speaker 1: you could see what was going on in the alcove.
Speaker 1: Lo and behold, here comes this party and it's Jerry
Speaker 1: and his wife and his one of the people that
Speaker 1: he had gone to Anchorage with. And you know it
Speaker 1: for me being a brand new guy. This was fascinating.
Speaker 1: Jerry is Jerome Jerry Max Paisley, a thirty three year
Speaker 1: old murderer and bomber with close ties to two prominent
Speaker 1: mafia families. So we sat there and we just kept
Speaker 1: making notes and watching all the activities and the pictures
Speaker 1: being taken, and boom, it's noted that Jerry married Peggy.
Speaker 1: Peggy is Peggy begat the widow of Congressman Nick beget
Speaker 1: at the time of the wedding. Did you know who
Speaker 1: Peggy was? I probably did, but I probably didn't put
Speaker 1: any significance to it. Were you aware at the time
Speaker 1: of the wedding that Peggy was the widow of a
Speaker 1: missing congressman? Uh? Yeah, but it didn't take it seriously.
Speaker 1: Why because it was it was an accident plane crack
Speaker 1: pause for a minute. Let this sink. In. Sixteen months
Speaker 1: and sixteen days after her husband, a U S congressman,
Speaker 1: disappeared in Alaska, Peggy Begett married Jerry Paisley, a mobster,
Speaker 1: at a wedding in Arizona. It sounds sensational, It is sensational,
Speaker 1: but I want to be clear it's true. It's not
Speaker 1: some baseless conspiracy. It did happen. I have a copy
Speaker 1: of the marriage license and photos of the reception. In fact,
Speaker 1: I have the original photos. Tom Davis gave them to me.
Speaker 1: The pictures I gave you with Jerry. That's the last
Speaker 1: I have unless I resurrect. Uh. Those are the originals
Speaker 1: I took and sent to you. But you can look
Speaker 1: at the paper and tell that that came out of
Speaker 1: the book, out of the Bible. This is from your bible. Yep.
Speaker 1: That's the last existing piece. Davis, who had to distinguished
Speaker 1: thirty six year career in law enforcement, worked on a
Speaker 1: small team that battled organized climb in Arizona. He had
Speaker 1: a secret book, a so called bible, which listed about
Speaker 1: a hundred local mobsters and their associates. In the bible
Speaker 1: was Jerry Paisley. Man Paisley, Where to start? He's so
Speaker 1: important to this story. I need to tell you about him,
Speaker 1: his history, his personality, his shocking laims. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to glorify him. He was a murderer and a bomber,
Speaker 1: an abusive, violent man. He doesn't deserve glory. Paisley was
Speaker 1: born in Detroit in nineteen forty one. He grew up
Speaker 1: in a bad neighborhood. As a teen, he enlisted in
Speaker 1: the Navy. I don't know much about his early years,
Speaker 1: just bits and pieces I picked up along the way.
Speaker 1: But I can share with you an incident that occurred
Speaker 1: when he was nineteen, a violent attack that illustrates the rough,
Speaker 1: jagged nature of his life from birth to death. On
Speaker 1: May three, nineteen sixty, Paisley was hitchhiking in California when
Speaker 1: four men accosted him using either a razor or a
Speaker 1: sharp piece of glass. Paisley wasn't sure which. They carved
Speaker 1: a four inch cross and two letters ZS into his arm. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: the wounds were superficial he didn't need stitches. Two years later,
Speaker 1: after the Navy discharged him, Paisley returned to Detroit. That's
Speaker 1: where he started working for the lick of Oli Family,
Speaker 1: an organized crime syndicate led by Pete Horseface lika Oli Senior.
Speaker 1: That's also where he befriended pete seniors sons, especially Pete Jr.
Speaker 1: In fact, the two men got close enough that in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, Pete Locooli Jr. Attended Paisley's wedding to
Speaker 1: Peggy Begat Pete Jr. And his wife Cathy even traveled
Speaker 1: with Peggy and Paisley on their honeymoon in Mexico. The
Speaker 1: lick of OLiS were a mid tier mob family, nothing
Speaker 1: special mid century. They moved from Detroit to Tucson. Paisley
Speaker 1: went with them. Soon thereafter, another much more famous mafia
Speaker 1: family also moved to Tucson, The Bananas. Remember Vito cor Leoni.
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando's character from the Godfather. Cor Leoni was based
Speaker 1: in part on famed mafia don Joe Bonano Senior. During
Speaker 1: the sixties in Tucson, Paisley befriended Banano's sons Bill and
Speaker 1: Joe Jr. He was captivated by the family's flashy infamy
Speaker 1: and gritty glamour ine. He even made a brief cameo
Speaker 1: and honor thy father. A best seller on the Bananas
Speaker 1: written by legendary author Gay Talise. I asked Talise, who's
Speaker 1: eight eight, if he remembers Paisley. He said he doesn't.
Speaker 1: That was a long time ago. The Bananas were not
Speaker 1: only celebrities in Tucson, they were well known throughout the nation.
Speaker 1: Joe Sr. Was quite literally the Big Cheese, a nickname
Speaker 1: he got by sinking his teeth into the dairy industry. Laugh,
Speaker 1: go ahead, but there was a lot of money to
Speaker 1: be made in the cheese trade, counterfeit, mazzarella, money laundering,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Bonano was a big deal, one of
Speaker 1: the most important mafioso's in American history, the patriarch of
Speaker 1: one of the so called Five families which dominated organized
Speaker 1: crime in New York City during the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Bonano saw himself as a gentleman. He liked to say
Speaker 1: that he lived by old school values. Booze but not narcotics. Murder, sure,
Speaker 1: but only if you deserved it. But he distorted reality.
Speaker 1: The Banano family was brutal. They were violent gangsters. They
Speaker 1: maimed and murdered, and bombed and extorted and kidnapped and
Speaker 1: committed fraud. Later, they tried to rehabilitate their image, But
Speaker 1: Joe Banano didn't become Joe Banano by being a polite
Speaker 1: man who just dabbled in bootlegging. For three decades from
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties to nineteen sixties, Banano held an iron
Speaker 1: grip on his family. His stranglehold began to unravel in
Speaker 1: the mid sixties when he got greedy and tried to
Speaker 1: assassinate rival mob bosses. The plot failed, igniting a bloody
Speaker 1: mob war called the Banana War, or, as the press
Speaker 1: sarcastically dubbed it, the Banana Split. See. One of Banano's nicknames,
Speaker 1: which he absolutely hated, was Joe Bananas, hence the name
Speaker 1: of his signature war. At one point during the war,
Speaker 1: Banana was kidnapped and for while he disappeared. It's thought, though,
Speaker 1: that he staged the kidnapping in order to avoid testifying
Speaker 1: before a grand jury. When he eventually resurfaced, he decided
Speaker 1: to make a strategic retreat to Tucson, where he quote retired.
Speaker 1: But that was bullshit. He was diminished, but not dead,
Speaker 1: and he certainly wasn't retired. I know, I'm throwing a
Speaker 1: million names at you, so let's recap. We have a
Speaker 1: Jerry Paisley, who married Peggy Beget, the widow of Congressman
Speaker 1: Nick Beget, in nineteen four b The Lick of OLiS,
Speaker 1: a mid tier mob family from Paisley's hometown of Detroit
Speaker 1: who relocated to Tucson and for whom Paisley worked. And
Speaker 1: see the Bananas, a famous mob family from New York
Speaker 1: who also relocated to Tucson and for whom Paisley also worked,
Speaker 1: Jerry Paisley, the Lick of Olies, the bananas, They're all
Speaker 1: tied together. But why Tucson. It seems random, right, an
Speaker 1: odd place for the mob to me. Not really, It's sunny,
Speaker 1: it's pretty removed from the violence of Chicago and New York.
Speaker 1: In Detroit, it makes sense, and Arizona had lacks laws
Speaker 1: which allowed the mob to easily launder money. Arizona was
Speaker 1: Switzerland in the United States. Arizona had a blind trust
Speaker 1: system in his banking system that allows people to hide
Speaker 1: moneys here just as effectively as they could in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: And the blind trust accounts that could be set up
Speaker 1: with laundered money the bank accounts themsels could also own
Speaker 1: real estate. And when I first began working over here
Speaker 1: in nearly seventies, Peccati was owned by number and nobody
Speaker 1: knew who owned anything. It was all through blind trust
Speaker 1: accounts at a bank. That's Don Devereaux a seasoned investigative
Speaker 1: reporter in Arizona who covered organized crime for decades. He's
Speaker 1: best known for his never ending investigation into the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six assassination of reporter Don Bowles, who was killed
Speaker 1: in Phoenix by a car bomb. Something will cover later.
Speaker 1: Devereaux also dug into both the Banano and Locavoli families.
Speaker 1: With two major mob families in Tucson, you'd figure there
Speaker 1: would be some bitter rivalry, so many angry egos crammed
Speaker 1: into a small desert city, but that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: We're looking Holy moved out here from Detroit, and he
Speaker 1: was a friend of Joe's and and and writed The
Speaker 1: Look of Religion. Lots of rolling people from around the
Speaker 1: country to move to Tucson and the Phoenix to retire.
Speaker 1: Look at really largely came to the Tucson area to retire.
Speaker 1: But Ana was still active when he was at me too,
Speaker 1: so but look a Holy largely had left Detroit behind.
Speaker 1: And there was a retired bob guy living comfortably in Tucson,
Speaker 1: um on a place called the Grace Ranches they called
Speaker 1: with his family. Uh and close friends and close enough
Speaker 1: they know they shared the same accountant um they were.
Speaker 1: You know, there were secrets between those guys. They were
Speaker 1: both friends and not competitors, and you know, happily you know,
Speaker 1: seeing each other as good friends. Yeah, even though the
Speaker 1: Bananas and Look of OLiS maintained peace between their respective families,
Speaker 1: their presidence was detrimental to Tucson as a whole. In
Speaker 1: the late sixties, the city became a hot spot for
Speaker 1: mob violence, most notably a series of high profile bombings.
Speaker 1: Many of these bombings were tied to extortion attempts, insurance scams,
Speaker 1: and vigilante payback. The motivation behind some, though, was more complicated.
Speaker 1: In July, the homes of both Joe Banano Senior and
Speaker 1: Pete Lacavoli Senior were bombed. There was a war started
Speaker 1: between Banana and Lukavoli by a rogue FDIH named David Hale.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, Hale began planning bombs on most
Speaker 1: of Banana and the look of Holy people as if
Speaker 1: they were fighting back and forth between themselves, trying to
Speaker 1: start some sort of an internet scene mob war between
Speaker 1: Lukaolian and It obviously didn't work, and David Hale got
Speaker 1: exposed as having you know, done this himself as an
Speaker 1: FBI agent. David Hale denied that he was behind the bombings.
Speaker 1: Hale was never convicted of any crime tied to the bombings.
Speaker 1: He didn't respond to interview requests in night, someone also
Speaker 1: bombed the house of a prominent judge named Evo Diconcini.
Speaker 1: DeConcini had been friends with Joe Banano, but later, when
Speaker 1: his son Dennis was elected to the U. S. Senate,
Speaker 1: he distanced himself from the mob boss. I just said
Speaker 1: someone bombed Judge Deconcini's home. But guess who that someone was.
Speaker 1: Jerry Paisley, the same Jerry Paisley who only six years
Speaker 1: later would marry Peggy Baggage. Several sources told me Paisley
Speaker 1: was behind the DeConcini bombing. Paisley was something of a fixer,
Speaker 1: they said, a wanna be gangster. He was technically a mobster,
Speaker 1: but low and seniority, more the guy you turn to
Speaker 1: to break some legs or chuck some dynamite over a
Speaker 1: fence than the mastermind of any operation. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: he was responsible for at least three bombings, including the
Speaker 1: DeConcini bombing. So how on earth did Jerry Paisley, a
Speaker 1: mobster who bombed to judge's house, end up marrying Peggy Begett,
Speaker 1: the widow of a missing congressman. How did they meet?
Speaker 1: The official story is this in late nine About a
Speaker 1: year after Nick Beggetts vanished, Peggy was with a friend
Speaker 1: at the holiday in an Anchorage when she ran into Paisley,
Speaker 1: who was tending bar. They hit it off, and a
Speaker 1: few months later, in March nineteen seventy four, they got
Speaker 1: hitched in Tucson. I've already told you why the mob
Speaker 1: was in Tucson. But why was the mob in Alaska
Speaker 1: in the seventies. Why was Jerry Paisley in Alaska in
Speaker 1: the seventies? One word oil. After the discovery of oil
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight at Prudeo Bay, Alaska boomed. Everything
Speaker 1: in modern Alaska history can be split into pre nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight and post nineteen Pre nineteen sixty eight, Alaska
Speaker 1: was scenic and had timber and bears a stereotype, sure,
Speaker 1: but people in the lower forty eight didn't really care
Speaker 1: about it except for its natural beauty, some of its resources,
Speaker 1: and at the height of the Cold War, it's strategic
Speaker 1: location near the Soviet Union. Post ninety eight, Alaska was
Speaker 1: an oil state, a state with immense wealth waiting to
Speaker 1: be tapped, a state with mounds of money just waiting
Speaker 1: to be pumped into people's pockets. Pre nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: there was crime, but wasn't exorbitant. Post ninety eight, it boomed.
Speaker 1: Pre ninety eight, you could still find affordable housing. Post
Speaker 1: night with a crush of new workers, you couldn't. It
Speaker 1: was during this boom atmosphere in nineteen seventy that Alaskin's
Speaker 1: first elected, Nick Baggetts, to the u. S. House. Beggetts
Speaker 1: had run a campaign promising to maximize oil prosperity, but importantly,
Speaker 1: he also acknowledged the problems that stirred up. Here's an
Speaker 1: ad he ran in nineteen seventy. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be an economist to know that we have a critical
Speaker 1: housing shortage. All you have to do is try to
Speaker 1: find a place to live. Five years ago, the typical
Speaker 1: monthly payments for a twenty thousand dollar home would be
Speaker 1: about one Now, a twenty thousand dollar home that's if
Speaker 1: you can find one, would be well over two dollars
Speaker 1: a month. America's leading housing official recently stated that less
Speaker 1: than of Americans can really afford to buy a home.
Speaker 1: That's the problem nationwide. The last situation is worse. There
Speaker 1: are practical solutions. Nick Beggatch finds practical solutions as a
Speaker 1: state senator. He's been doing it for eight years, and
Speaker 1: he's been vocal about it. Nick begat has always wanted
Speaker 1: you to know where he stood. He still does. Nick
Speaker 1: beggat is Alaska's man for Congress. Beggatte went on to
Speaker 1: help pass the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act or ANKSA,
Speaker 1: a monumental piece of legislation that removed a major obstacle
Speaker 1: blocking construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline, but the pipeline
Speaker 1: still faced countless legal, political, and environmental hurdles. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until March nine, two and a half years after Beggett's vanished,
Speaker 1: that construction finally began. Poor morning. After years of planning,
Speaker 1: court fights, and stockpiling of materials, construction of the Alaska
Speaker 1: Oil Pipeline begins. It will run almost eight hundred miles
Speaker 1: from the North supe of Alaska to the port of Valdes.
Speaker 1: The pipeline is supposed to be finished in about two
Speaker 1: years at a cost of at least six billion dollars.
Speaker 1: The Big boom is already underway in Alaska. Asked the
Speaker 1: people in the city of Fairbanks, for example, Jack Perkins did,
Speaker 1: and here is his report. It used to be in
Speaker 1: fair Banks that keeping the snow shoveled half the roof
Speaker 1: was one of the main problems. But today, with the
Speaker 1: coming of the pipe loving, Fairbanks is a boomtown and
Speaker 1: there are new problems they never thought of here before.
Speaker 1: Used to be in Fairbanks you can make a telephone
Speaker 1: call right away without having to try for an hour
Speaker 1: without getting buzzed off. But with the pipeline, the local
Speaker 1: phone system is flooded with more calls than a year
Speaker 1: ago and can't handle them. Used to be, you could
Speaker 1: get an apartment, nothing fancy, but sheltered for a couple
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Now rents have doubled and tripled, one bedroom
Speaker 1: five hundred a month and hardly anything available. Vacancy rate
Speaker 1: in Fairbanks about zero. And consider crime rates. Always a
Speaker 1: drinking town, but arrests for drunkenness now up a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five percent, juvenile arrests up fifty robberies up
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty three percent, and with all the
Speaker 1: pipeline workers passing through town with their rolls of money,
Speaker 1: prostitution arrests up seven percent. Many of the people who
Speaker 1: moved to Alaska long before the oil boom were upset
Speaker 1: to see the pristine home changing so rapidly. What you're
Speaker 1: getting here, of course, is what is what they call progress,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Now that's one name for it. I've heard
Speaker 1: other names for it which might not be arable. It
Speaker 1: happens to sit. Is this bursting and straining toward what
Speaker 1: is sometimes called progress? But maybe nowhere has it ever
Speaker 1: happened so much and so fast. And it's not just
Speaker 1: the people of Fairbanks weren't ready for it is there?
Speaker 1: Many of them don't want it at all. Jack Perkins,
Speaker 1: NBC News, Fairbanks, Alaska. Two years later, in June nine,
Speaker 1: construction on the pipeline wrapped up. Oil Mania reached a
Speaker 1: fever pitch. Now the richest could really flow. There's oil
Speaker 1: in the pipeline, the Trans Alaska Pipeline. This evening pump
Speaker 1: station number one at Prudeoe Bay, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles north of the Arctic Circle today began pushing heated
Speaker 1: crude oil into the pipe. Don Oliver was there here.
Speaker 1: It is finally finished after eight years of planning and building.
Speaker 1: The oil companies rattled off all sorts of superlative statistics
Speaker 1: about it. Eight hundred miles long, built by a peak
Speaker 1: workforce of more than tw thousands from one end to
Speaker 1: the other, it will hold three hundred and eighty million
Speaker 1: gallons of oil. The cost nearly eight billion dollars, the
Speaker 1: largest most expensive project ever attempted by a private enterprise. Okay,
Speaker 1: so again, by this point it should be blatantly obvious
Speaker 1: why the Mob and Jerry Paisley specifically came to Alaska
Speaker 1: in the seventies. Oil oil is what drew the Mob
Speaker 1: to Alaska. Oil is what drew Paisley to Alaska. It
Speaker 1: was a black gold rush. Here's Mike Grimes, a retired
Speaker 1: cop who worked for the Anchorage Police Department. That was
Speaker 1: the period when Alaska was just booming. It was like
Speaker 1: a goal rush count because of oil pipeline being constructed,
Speaker 1: so much money up there. They had such a dramatic
Speaker 1: increase in population, and everybody coming from somewhere else, uh
Speaker 1: to get rich in Alaska. And so it was a
Speaker 1: very fascinating time to be working vice. And there was
Speaker 1: only three of us on the vice squad at that time.
Speaker 1: And uh, we had such an influx of prostitutional vainly
Speaker 1: off the West coast. So the prostitution industry was just
Speaker 1: booming up there on the gambling that we were having
Speaker 1: people come from all over with organized crime behind them
Speaker 1: from other states and set up underground gambling joints in
Speaker 1: Anchorage and uh and then after hours clubs that were
Speaker 1: illegally serving alcohol. So we were inundated for the three
Speaker 1: man vice squad. It was a wild time and Paisley
Speaker 1: and the mob wanted to cash in drugs, sex work,
Speaker 1: you name it. Paisley moved to Alaska nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: with his close friend Sal Spinelli. Like Paisley, Spinelli was
Speaker 1: a mobster with ties to both the lick of Oli
Speaker 1: and Banano crime families. When Paisley wed Peggy beget in
Speaker 1: March n Spinelli was his best man After the wedding.
Speaker 1: When Peggy, Paisley, and Spinelli returned to Anchorage, Spinelli opened
Speaker 1: a jewelry store with Peggy's oldest son, Nick Begett's Jr.
Speaker 1: Multiple law enforcement sources told me the store was a
Speaker 1: front for stolen jewelry, including turquoise traffic from Arizona to Alaska.
Speaker 1: Nick Begats Jr. Now a well known conspiracy theorist, was
Speaker 1: only a teenager at the time. He declined interview requests.
Speaker 1: He was never convicted of any crime pertaining to the
Speaker 1: theft of jewelry, and again, he was only a kid,
Speaker 1: a kid who lost his dad and ended up with
Speaker 1: a violent new stepfather, Jerry Paisley. As Paisley settled into
Speaker 1: married life, Peggy Begett now Peggy Paisley, showered him with money.
Speaker 1: After Nick, her first husband, disappeared, Peggy had received a
Speaker 1: windfall of cash. According to documents I found archived at
Speaker 1: the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, there was a fifty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollar life insurance policy which had a double indemnity
Speaker 1: clause for accidental death, so a hundred and ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars from that, and there was a one time forty
Speaker 1: five dollar benefit from Congress, plus the balance of Nick's
Speaker 1: checking in retirement accounts. Altogether, Peggy got at least a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty eight thousand, four hundred and thirty one
Speaker 1: dollars and seven cents, about a million dollars today when
Speaker 1: adjusted for inflation. She inherited other things too, including apartment buildings.
Speaker 1: Peggy spent much of that money on her new husband
Speaker 1: and Paisley. The newlyweds honeymoon in Mexico. They were joined
Speaker 1: on that trip, as I said earlier, by Pete Lacavol Jr.
Speaker 1: And his wife Cathy. Peggy bought Paisley expensive jewelry and
Speaker 1: fancy cars too, including a Cadillac El Dorado and a
Speaker 1: Jaguar x K. She also bought him a bar. In
Speaker 1: May nineteen seventy four, two months after Peggy and Paisley wed,
Speaker 1: they started a business called Max Inc. I obtained the
Speaker 1: company's records from the state of Alaska. Peggy was the president,
Speaker 1: Paisley was the secretary treasurer, and another man whom I'll
Speaker 1: discussed later was the vice president. Max Inc. Operated a
Speaker 1: bar and anchorage called the Alaska Mining Company, the type
Speaker 1: of watering hole that minted money during the oil boom.
Speaker 1: It had previously been called the Green Dragon. Here again
Speaker 1: is Mike Grimes, the retired Anchorage cop who worked vice
Speaker 1: in the seventies. I heard Paisley was involved in the
Speaker 1: it's called Laska Mining Company before it was a reading dragon,
Speaker 1: that he was involved in that place with the Beggy
Speaker 1: just and I said, God, what are they doing this scumback?
Speaker 1: You know, because uh, I mean, I was a lifelong
Speaker 1: Alaskan Nick Beggy towards my congress. Peggy and Paisley's marriage
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly common knowledge, at least to the general public,
Speaker 1: but a good number of politically connected folks and members
Speaker 1: of law enforcement knew about it. Perhaps this is a
Speaker 1: good time to pause to examine why the marriage is
Speaker 1: even newsworthy at all, because I know what people will say.
Speaker 1: They'll say I'm reporting it because it's salacious. They'll say
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sex up this story in order to
Speaker 1: sell it. But that's not true. They don't know what
Speaker 1: I know. At first glance, Peggy Begett seems to be
Speaker 1: a sympathetic character, a woman whose husband vanished, a woman
Speaker 1: who became a single mother to six kids, a woman
Speaker 1: who's now a grandmother in her eighties. Typically her personal
Speaker 1: life would be none of my business. Sure, she ran
Speaker 1: for Congress several times after Nick disappeared, so she was
Speaker 1: for a while a public figure. But that's not why
Speaker 1: I'm reporting this, So bear with me. We have a
Speaker 1: ways to go. I also want to be clear about
Speaker 1: something else. I'm not reporting everything I know. I learned
Speaker 1: a lot, but certain things, while salacious, aren't pertinent to
Speaker 1: this story, and I'm purposely leaving them out. Also, one
Speaker 1: more thing, Mark beget, Peggy's son, served for six years
Speaker 1: in the U. S. Senate. So let me say too
Speaker 1: that I have no political agenda here. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think Mark was a good senator, and he was just
Speaker 1: a kid when all of this happened, a kid traumatized
Speaker 1: by the loss of his father. Peggy Beggett and Mark
Speaker 1: Beggett declined multiple interview requests. Living large on Peggy's money,
Speaker 1: Paisley spiraled out of control by nine six. He was
Speaker 1: heavily into drugs, was married to Peggy. He just couldn't
Speaker 1: leave a cocaine alone. And it's since the cocaine and
Speaker 1: the women and this and that, and it just it
Speaker 1: was terrible to to watch the deterioration of his and
Speaker 1: Peggy's relationship. I felt sorry for Peggy, you know, and
Speaker 1: she got herself into something that she probably had no idea.
Speaker 1: Do you know if she knew of his background really
Speaker 1: when they got married. I would say she did not,
Speaker 1: but I have no way of knowing for sure. That's
Speaker 1: Paisley's friend. George Schaefer. I've known Paisley since the early sixties.
Speaker 1: I probably knew him better than anybody in Alaska. Schaefer
Speaker 1: met Paisley in Arizona sometime around nineteen. He owned a bar,
Speaker 1: it was called the Cabaret Lounge in Tucson in Arizona,
Speaker 1: and at that time, there was a lot of things
Speaker 1: going on with the well, there was all those bombings
Speaker 1: in Tucson. They were there was a group of people
Speaker 1: that were coming in and trying to get a protection
Speaker 1: racket on with some of the local bar owners around
Speaker 1: the town. And I was kind of brought in and
Speaker 1: used as a little bit of a muscle for them.
Speaker 1: Just they were coming in and intimidating the bar owners
Speaker 1: themselves and just trying to get them to pay protection
Speaker 1: money like they did back east. Who doesn't work that
Speaker 1: well in the West. So that's how I originally met Paisley.
Speaker 1: He was kind of on the other side, and we
Speaker 1: kind of became friends, but not not to any great extent.
Speaker 1: When you say he was quite of on the other side,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by that, Well, he was associated
Speaker 1: with several of the so called mafia people, mainly the
Speaker 1: Nanos and and Lickabli. Paisley, Shafer said, was a quote
Speaker 1: crazy person wherever he went because trouble as far as
Speaker 1: the deal with Peggy she did by him that mining company,
Speaker 1: which is the bar. I guess you don't. You're well
Speaker 1: aware that I got shot there. I don't know the details.
Speaker 1: I do know that you were shot there. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: I was shot there by somebody. You know that no
Speaker 1: one knew. I mean, it was just a an incident
Speaker 1: that I was in the wrong place the wrong time. Pasically,
Speaker 1: he had a partner in the bar long you know,
Speaker 1: his wife gave him that more or less as a
Speaker 1: wedding gift. As far as the ownership in the bar,
Speaker 1: his partner was a real straight ace guy, would never
Speaker 1: break the law. In fact, when I went there to
Speaker 1: go to work, the only reason he called me in
Speaker 1: is because his regular bouncer from Phoenix, ron Moawyer was
Speaker 1: his name, and he had cleaned the bar up as
Speaker 1: far as riff raff and all that. Well, he he
Speaker 1: worked two years, had to go on vacation. Jerry wanted
Speaker 1: me to work there for the two weeks while he
Speaker 1: was on vacation, and I originally said no, and then
Speaker 1: he talked me into it anyway, So I was just
Speaker 1: supposed to be paid under the table for two weeks
Speaker 1: and his partners, Oh, no, we can't do that. We
Speaker 1: need to put him on the payroll. Yeah, we gotta
Speaker 1: keep everything above board. And so I was lucky that
Speaker 1: I was on work in the cop when I got shot.
Speaker 1: But Danny Ziminich was the guy's name was partner's name,
Speaker 1: Daniel Max. Zevinich was the third person who had an
Speaker 1: ownership steak in Max Inc. The business Peggy and Paisley
Speaker 1: started after they got married. Sevenich was the company's vice president.
Speaker 1: The company was called Max Inc. Because both Zivinich and
Speaker 1: Paisley shared the same middle name. Max Zeveni is a
Speaker 1: key figure in this story, someone you'll hear about in
Speaker 1: later episodes. He's still alive. He owns a popular bar
Speaker 1: in Anchorage. He declined multiple requests for an on the
Speaker 1: record interview. In late nineteen Peggy and Paisley got divorced.
Speaker 1: Newly single, Paisley moved back to Arizona. For the next
Speaker 1: fifth teen years, he was in and out of prison
Speaker 1: on a variety of charges, including aggravated assault. Sometime around
Speaker 1: he was paroled and he got a job in Phoenix
Speaker 1: selling cars. There was a deal or another guy got
Speaker 1: out of prison that he was in with. After a
Speaker 1: few months they got together and there was a gal
Speaker 1: involved a little bit. I don't know. He's told me
Speaker 1: the details and I have forgotten them, except that he
Speaker 1: ended up killing that guy and was going to kill
Speaker 1: He told me that he pointed the gun. I guess
Speaker 1: he killed a couple of guys, two of them in
Speaker 1: the front seat, and he pointed the gun at the
Speaker 1: girl and it jammed and didn't go off. Uh so
Speaker 1: he didn't kill her. But anyway, now he's wanted by
Speaker 1: the law. And that's when he came to live with me,
Speaker 1: just for a few weeks, and I got him a
Speaker 1: job where they didn't even want to know his name
Speaker 1: and it was cashing to the table. Well, he he
Speaker 1: destroyed any anything, any kind of friendship we ever had
Speaker 1: because he ended up robbin some people while he was there.
Speaker 1: And of course he left left my truck at the
Speaker 1: Seattle airport. I was on vacation, left my truck at
Speaker 1: the Seattle Airport. I had to go get it and
Speaker 1: then I had to explain to the sheriffs. But there
Speaker 1: was that he was on the ten most wanted and
Speaker 1: they called him jealous Jerry. Well, he got so mad
Speaker 1: about that because that wasn't a story at all. He
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the girl or he he
Speaker 1: didn't have any affair with her or nothing. But so
Speaker 1: that's motivated him to turn himself in. And that was in.
Speaker 1: You just heard Schaefer say Heisley was on the ten
Speaker 1: Most Wanted list, presumably the famous FBI list. Other people
Speaker 1: told me Paisley was on America's Most Wanted. Neither is accurate.
Speaker 1: In fact, Paisley was on a show called Prime Suspect.
Speaker 1: Think of it as a kind of rip off of
Speaker 1: America's Most Wanted. We tried to dig up the segment
Speaker 1: to share it with you, but we couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: When it aired. Sometime in ninety three, Paisley was living
Speaker 1: with George Schaefer, hiding out from the cops in Eagle Creek, Oregon,
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes southeast of Portland. By that point, he
Speaker 1: had murdered at least five people, and he still had
Speaker 1: murder on his mind. I'll tell you another interesting story
Speaker 1: before we go, just like if you're interested in it.
Speaker 1: It was an obsession to Jerry Head. While he was
Speaker 1: in Oregon. He was obsessed with wanting to kill a
Speaker 1: dentist in Safford, Arizona, and evidently the dentist had done
Speaker 1: something to him. Farley was in prison in Arizona. He
Speaker 1: was sent down there to have a tooth pole or something,
Speaker 1: and a guy wouldn't give him enough novacaine. And then
Speaker 1: he told Jerry, I'm here to State to extract pain
Speaker 1: on you. I make you feel good. So Jerry was
Speaker 1: obsessed with that, and he sware someday he was going
Speaker 1: to kill a dentist. Paisley didn't end up killing the dentist. Instead,
Speaker 1: in March, he turned himself in. He was subsequently convicted
Speaker 1: of murder and sentenced to life in prison. By late
Speaker 1: Paisley was fifty three. He had no chance of getting out,
Speaker 1: no chance of leniency or reduced sentence. He was going
Speaker 1: to die behind bars. That's when he figured, fuck it,
Speaker 1: what do I have to lose? And he started talking
Speaker 1: next time on missing in Alaska. That blow him up.
Speaker 1: I don't know that JB have him blown up. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I know I took a fucking package up
Speaker 1: there and they said it was a bum. They might
Speaker 1: have been bullshit me. Here are your three tasks for
Speaker 1: the week. First, I'd really like to get a copy
Speaker 1: of the episode of Prime Suspect that featured Jerry Paisley.
Speaker 1: I know it aired sometime between June and March. Help
Speaker 1: me find it. Second, I'd also like to get a
Speaker 1: copy of a nineteen one special report produced by k
Speaker 1: g u N, the Tucson ABC affiliate, called The Big
Speaker 1: Cheese Joe Bonano's Notes. Finally, I mentioned earlier than an
Speaker 1: undercover reporter witnessed Jerry Paisley's wedding to Peggy Baggage. I
Speaker 1: believe that reporter is still alive, possibly living in the UK,
Speaker 1: but I haven't been able to find him. His name
Speaker 1: is Alex Dressler d R E H S L e R.
Speaker 1: If you know him, contact us. You can reach us
Speaker 1: by phone at one eight three three m I A
Speaker 1: Tips that's one eight three three six four two eight
Speaker 1: four seven seven again one eight three three six four
Speaker 1: two eight four seven seven, or you can reach us
Speaker 1: via email at tips at iHeart media dot com. That's tips,
Speaker 1: T I P S at iHeart Media dot com. Ben
Speaker 1: Bowen is our executive producer. Paul Decan is our supervising producer.
Speaker 1: Chris Brown is our assistant producer. Seth Nicholas Johnson is
Speaker 1: our producer, Sam T. Garden is our research assistant, and
Speaker 1: I'm your host and executive producer, John Wallzac. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at at John Wallzac j O
Speaker 1: n W A L c z a K. Footage for
Speaker 1: this episode was provided by NBC and the Vanderbilt Television
Speaker 1: News Archive special thanks to the Alaska and Polar Region's
Speaker 1: Collections and archives at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Missing
Speaker 1: in Alaska is a co production of I Heart Media
Speaker 1: and Greenfork Media m M m HM